Short Film Tells Incredible Story of Levittowner's Holocaust Survival

When Ron Musser arrived at an unassuming Levittown home 25 years ago, it was supposed to be just a routine repair to a customer's HVAC system, one he has made hundreds of times. When he left a few hours later, Musser's mind had been blown away by the story told by his customer, Dave Wisnia, an original Levittown homeowner who escaped a Nazi labor camp and became a deocrated war hero with the 101st Airborne Division.

"I would watch movies like 'Schindler's List' and 'The Pianist' and impose him on the films, imagining him actually living through this," said Musser. "His story is so freaking good, and he carries no bitterness over what he had to live through."

Wisnia has visited classrooms and youth groups to tell his amazing tale of survival and triumph, but Musser has long been interested in taking the story to wider audiences. After recently launching the Comfort Media Group, Musser finally got his wish.

"I wanted to get this story recorded before it was too late," said Musser, seated in a conference room at Energy Concepts Inc., a Bensalem-based heating and air conditioning company that Musser also owns and manages. "Every time someone from that generation passes away, it's like a library burning to the ground."

Musser gathered his colleague, Mike Gospodarek, and hired freelance filmmaker Dan Kelly to help shoot a documentary about Wisnia. The crew spent two hours filming the talk between Musser and Wisnia, leaving Kelly the unenviable task of editing the footage down to 30 minutes.

"He repeated a lot of things, which helped," said Kelly. "Their conversation was not exactly linear, so it took some time to piece the story together."

After a short intro from Musser, Kelly intersperses the short film with archived photos from World War II with footage of Wisnia speaking about his experiences. Besides the subtle soundtrack in the background, there are not a lot of bells and whistles in the documentary. With a story like Wisnia's, any attempt to dress it up would have been unnecessary.

The talk starts off with Wisnia describing his move to the Levittown neighborhood with his wife, Dr. Hope Wisnia, before getting to the meat of the tale.

The whole thing is much more fascinating coming straight from Wisnia, but to sum it up, he was living in Warsaw with his family when the Nazis invaded in 1941. His brother and father were killed, and Wisnia was taken to Auschwitz, where he survived for three-and-a-half years. As Allied forces began to advance closer to the concentration camp, Wisnia and the other surviving prisoners were forced to walk to Dachau, Germany.

While at Dachau, the Germans placed Wisnia with the forced labor detail along the railroad. It was during one of these details that Wisnia found an opportunity to make a break for it. He spent days hiding in barns in the German countryside before coming across a tank patrol led by the 101st Airborne Division. He joined the American forces as a translator and machine gunner until the war ended.

"I'm a big time history buff, and I thought I was just going to Dave's house to hold a camera," said Gospodarek. "He completely changed how I thought about the Holocaust."

Musser released the film on YouTube a few weeks ago and has seen incredible responses from the community. It is just the first of several films he has planned for a series he is calling Levittown Legends.

"We have our own studio now, so we are going to really focus on getting these videos produced," said Musser. "I want our next one to be about Hal Lefcourt. He's considered Mr. Levittown and a living legend in the community."